Bernard Parks

The campaign of Bernard Parks claimed that its opponent for an open seat on the County Board of Supervisors, state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, is attacking Parks in an attempt to distract the media and voters from Ridley-Thomas' ties to former SEIU President Tyrone Freeman, who is currently under federal investigation for misuse of union dues.

The race for the 2nd District L.A. County Supervisor seat took another strange turn this week.
 
The saga began with some anonymous emails claiming that candidate Bernard Parks (D-Los Angeles), an L.A. City Councilman, had been a registered member of the small, conservative American Independent Party for ten years.

The West Los Angeles Democratic Club’s Saturday afternoon debate was more wonkish than wild as less than 150 voters listened to measured responses by the two leading faces in the L.A. County Board of Supervisors’ 2nd District race.

Noteworthy in the 2nd District debate has been how plodding the events can feel due to the sometimes dry public personas of the race’s two top candidates - 26th District State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas and Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks.

Both have solid political resumes – Ridley-Thomas with his City Council, Assembly and State Senate years and Parks with his City Council work, a bulwark against his sometimes controversial stint as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. But neither has the want-to-shake-his-hand zest of L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; if the mayor feels sometimes like a Hispanic Jack Kennedy, Parks and Ridley-Thomas both can come off as African-American versions of Henry “Scoop” Jackson.

The environmentally conscious Los Angeles League of Conversation Voters is gearing up for its annual fundraiser on May 18th and the event is becoming a fruitful “green” stop on the local primary circuit.

Despite Hollywood's love of environmental issues, the league has more of an L.A. County than a City of L.A. feel as the county's local political machinations are one part of its activist mandate. Poorer, off-the-radar cities in southeast L.A. County with serious environmental hazards such as Maywood and Cerritos are more likely to attract the league's attention than very green towns like Malibu and Santa Monica.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ 2nd District race heats up Thursday night with a debate between L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks and 26th District State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas. The race has proven a bit bruising as business, labor and African-American leaders have had to choose between endorsing one of the two black politicians.  read more »

The Los Angeles Times wrote their obligatory story last week about the fundraising in the race for the open 2nd Supervisorial District, but, as is fairly typical with the Times, they missed the bigger story.

While the Times reported accurately that former Police Chief and current Councilman Bernard Parks outraised former Councilman and current State Senator Mark Ridley Thomas, the Times reporter neglected to pull the public campaign reports of the Independent Expenditure Committees that have been formed to support Thomas. These reports show that the IE campaign, funded by unions has amassed $2.7 million to spend against Parks. This is more than double the combined amount that both candidate’s official campaign committees have raised.  The Deputy Sheriffs Union has kicked in $500,000 and the Firefighters Union has also given $350,000 to the effort. Virtually every Union in the County has thrown big money into the IE campaign.

It’s rare when a seat on the LA County BOS is open, but with Yvonne Burke’s retirement, it is the first open seat in 12 year. A solidly Democratic seat, heavily rooted in the Black community, though had certain Latinos shown any guts, they could have had a shot at winning. The race has boiled down to Senator Mark Ridley Thomas and Councilman (and former LAPD Chief) Bernard Parks.

Labor is throwing everything they have into Thomas’ campaign and expect to spend at least $500,000 (by any other accounting standards than the unions, it means $1 million) into an Independent Expenditure effort for him.  If they are successful – which is doubtful – labor has virtually nothing to gain by their efforts, except for throwing hard earned workers’ money away.